


How The Light Gets In

by GreenWool



Series: Home Is In Your Skin [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Coming of Age, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 07:37:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11157252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenWool/pseuds/GreenWool
Summary: "This isn’t my story to tell, but Peeta doesn’t dwell on the past like I do." Home Is In Your Skin, through Peeta's eyes.





	How The Light Gets In

**Author's Note:**

> “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”  
> -Leonard Cohen

My Little Adelita,

 

I know that it is freezing, but you and me will have to walk. It’s late, the sun is barely finished setting and it will be colder soon, but there is too much I need to say and not even a fraction of the time that I need to say it in. 

 

We are in a city, a big one, with bright lights all around us- lining the streets, in cars and buildings and warm little cafes. It’s so bright here that the stars themselves disappear into the black curtain of the sky, and the moon is barely visible herself, so if you become the kind of person who needs heaven to navigate, you won’t find it here. And that’s part of the reason you and I are braving the cold. Because here in this city- with all the lights and the people and the cloud of smog overhead- heaven can’t see us, and we can’t see it, and no one on this street knows or cares what this walk will mean to us.

 

You see, Adelita, we’re alone. 

 

Just you and me. 

 

For the first, and the last, time.

 

-

 

When I get home, I will toe off my boots in front of the door and drop my keys on the counter. I will call into the apartment that I am home, and I’m starving, and can’t we get Chinese food again? It will be the third time this week, but since the fault is entirely yours, Adelita, I think you will understand why I have an existential need for Tien Kue Inn’s greasy, flaky deep fried egg rolls. 

 

Footsteps will start in the back of the apartment and walk toward me, and around the corner of the living room a man with rumpled blonde curls will scowl at me, and he will tell me that I need to eat a vegetable at some point. He’s right, of course, more so than ever now. But he doesn’t know that yet. All he knows is that I will only eat vegetables if they are raw or in his mother’s soup, and I definitely haven’t had any lately. He’s always right, Adelita, and one day it will annoy you as much as it does me. 

 

But for now, since he does not know of you, I will let him bully me into stir fry. The two of us will eat in front of the television, but we won’t be watching. He will tell me about his day- what happened with his study group that meets twice a week but never seems to get enough work done, what happened in his classes, and about the essay he still has to write before Friday. I will listen, because I love him, and watching him talk about what makes him excited makes me love him even more. I could burst from it, Adelita, I love him so bad, and I know my turn to talk will come soon and I will have to tell him about you, and afterward our lives will never be the same. 

 

So before all that, you and me? We need to talk. There are things you need to know. About me. And about him. 

 

Things he won’t want you to know.

 

“Katniss,” he will say, with that look on his face that says he thinks I am both unreasonable and completely tragic. “You don’t know what's gonna happen. Try to believe that we have long, full lives ahead of us.” 

 

It will go unspoken, of course, that I don't believe this at all, and that is why I still have not gone back to school and eat egg rolls as often as I can. He will then do everything in his power to convince me that I am wrong, mostly by trying to counsel me out of what I know to be true. 

 

“Katniss,” he will say. “You're going to scare her.”

 

But you’re made of sturdier stuff than he hasn’t given you credit for yet, aren’t you?

 

I  _ know _ you are. I can feel it already. You’re a survivor already, little one. 

 

Just like me.

 

And your father.

 

-

 

_ The boy is too young to know his alphabet, but he already knows the woman with the pink cheeks and mane of blonde curls isn't nice. Her eyes are cool and clinical when he fidgets or coos, examining him with less curiosity than vague annoyance. Especially when he cries. She presses his cheeks together- hard- to mold his face back into a shape she can tolerate. Puts her hand over his mouth to muffle the sounds he makes. When his little cries escape through her fingers she presses harder, ignoring his flailing arms and kicking legs as her palm presses into his nose. She watches as his movements grow weaker until his eyes start to roll back. Then, as if just realizing what she’s done, she wrenches her hand back.  _

 

_ The boys eyes roll back down. They fix on the woman with the curly hair. She watches him for a moment, as if waiting for something. But the boy is silent now, blinking large, watery eyes that look just like hers up at her as he kicks his little legs and gums his bottom lip. The woman blinks back, then turns and walks out of the room. The door closes behind her, her footsteps down the hall chased by the boy’s sudden, muffled cry. _

 

_ - _

 

_ At night a man in a grey suit joins the boy and the woman.  _

 

_ The man has very little hair left, but what remains is sandy brown and pin straight. He lifts the boy up as soon as he gets home and presses a kiss to his curl covered head. The boy giggles and shrieks in happiness, waving his arms as the man speaks words the boy still cannot make sense of. The man brings with him two other boys, both older. They are loud and fast and sometimes scary. But their excitement is infectious, and the boy gurgles gleefully and claps his hands.  _

 

_ But what the boy really understands is that when the man in the grey suit and the two boys arrive, the woman with the curly hair transforms into something luminous. She tickles the boy’s cheek, cuddles him close to her chest, kisses the soft, white curls on his head. She glows warm and bright in his eyes, her cheeks pink and her smile gentle and adoring, but her arms crush him closer and closer every time he tries to squirm away, and she pinches him if his face starts screwing up to cry.  _

 

_ And if he does cry…  _ _ somehow _ _ more of his food ends up on his face or lap than in his mouth.  _

 

_ - _

 

_ But the boy is lucky.  _

 

_ He will forget the woman’s crushing grip. _

 

_ He will forget her indifferent eyes. _

 

_ In fact, he will forget her entirely, aside from a few unexplainable flashes of memory. The woman leaving him in a brightly colored room full of other children, and not looking back. The woman pulling a long sleeved shirt over his head and telling him it was too cold for t-shirts, even though the boy knew, somehow, it wasn't. The deep pain in his shoulder- the very secret pain he is not allowed to tell anyone about- as she yanks his right arm through the sleeve. And the last time he sees the woman, her usually blank eyes furious, hate-filled chips of ice staring at him from across a paper-strewn table at a diner.  _

 

_ A man in a black suit gathers the papers and all the other adults that surround the woman and the boy stand up. A woman in a purple suit gathers the boy into her arms. Something has happened, and the boy doesn’t understand, but he knows the woman with the blond curls is angry, and the man in the grey suit is stony faced, and as another woman gathers him into her arms, he starts to cry.  _

 

_ “It’s ok,” she whispers, bouncing him in her arms. The rocking movements are sudden, so strange and so foreign the boy quiets immediately, unsure of what to expect next. But even as he holds his breath, he realizes the feeling of being rocked may be new, but it’s not bad. In fact, it’s better than not bad. His eyelids feel heavy and warm. He sinks into the woman’s shoulder, holding his right arm, now in a cast and sling, close to himself as he buries his face into the shoulder of her purple suit. “It’s ok, Peeta-baby. I’ve got you.” _

 

_ - _

 

And for a long while, Adelita, everything  _ was _ ok.

 

Until it wasn’t.


End file.
